The novels, romances, and memoirs of Alphonse Daudet (11 page)

" I think it is very beautiful," says Little What's-His-Name shamelessly, for he is already beginning to feel alarmed at his victory.

His baseness is thrown away, however. M. Viot will not be comforted ; he bows without answering, and still keeps his bitter smile. He keeps it all day; and on the way home, in the evening, in the midst of the songs of the boys, the crash of the music, and the noise of the wagons rolling over the pavements of the town where all have gone to sleep, Little What's-His-Name hears near him, in the shadow, his rival's keys jingling: "Clink, clank, clink. Master Poet; we '11 pay you for this."

CHAPTER IX.

THE BOUCOYRAN AFFAIR.

Our holidays were buried with the feast of Saint Theophile,

The days that followed were sad ; it was like the morning after Shrove Tuesday. Nobody felt in the right mood, neither the masters nor the boys. We were setting to work again, and after two long months of rest, it was with difficulty that the school recovered its wonted movement. The wheels ran badly, like those of an old clock that people had long forgotten to wind. Gradually, however, thanks to M. Viot, everything fell into order. Every day, at the same hour, at the sound of the same bell, the little doors of the court-yards opened, and long lines of children, stiff as wooden soldiers, filed out two by two, under the trees; then the bell rang again, — ding, dong! and the same children passed back through the; same little doors. Ding, dong! Get up! Ding, dong! Go to bed. Ding, dong! Study hard. Ding, dong! Have a good time. And so on for the whole year.

O triumph of discipline! How happy the young Menalcas would have been to live under M. Viot's rod, in the model school of Sarlande!

7

I alone made the shadow in this adorable picture, I could not manage my class. The terrible intermediates had come back from their mountains, uglier, rougher, wilder than ever. On my side, I had become embittered ; my illness had made me nervous and irritable, and I could not bear the least thing. The year before I had been too mild; this year I was too severe. I hoped thus to subdue these troublesome boys, and for the least prank I overwhelmed the whole class with extra tasks, and kept them in after hours.

This system was not successful. My punishments, by dint of being lavished, depreciated in value, and fell as low as the paper money of the year IV. One day, I felt myself overpowered. My class was in open revolt, and I had no more ammunition with which to make head against the insurrection. I can still see myself at my desk, struggling like mad, in the midst of cries, tears, groans, and hisses: " Get out of the room!—Be off with you ! — Sss ! Sss ! — No more tyrants ! — You are unjust! " And the inkstands were flying, and paper balls were hitting against my desk, and all these little monsters, under pretence of remonstrance, were hanging on to my seat in clusters, yelling like baboons.

Sometimes, despairing of my cause, I called in M. Viot to my assistance. Think what a humiliation ! Ever since the festival of Saint-Theophile, the man with the keys had been severe with me, and I knew that he took pleasure in my distress. When he entered the class-room abruptly, carrying

his keys, it was like a stone thrown into a frog-pond : in the twinkling of an eye all the boys were back in their places, bending over their books. One might have heard a pin drop. M, Viot walked up and down a moment, shaking his bunch of keys, in the midst of profound silence; then he looked at me ironically, and retired without speaking.

I was very unhappy. My colleagues, the masters, made fun of me. The principal, when I met him, was short in his manners to me, and I was sure that M. Viot had had a hand in that. To crown all, the Boucoyran affair occurred.

Oh, that Boucoyran affair! I am sure that it remained in the annals of the school, and that the people of Sarlande are still talking about it. I, too, should like to talk about this terrible business. It is time for the public to know the truth of it.

A boy of fifteen, with big feet, big eyes, big hands, no forehead, and the manners of a farm-servant,— such was the Marquis de Boucoyran, the terror of the court of intermediates, and sole specimen of the nobility of Cevennes at the school of Sarlande. The principal thought a great deal of this boy, on account of the aristocratic lustre his presence lent the establishment. In the school he was always called " the Marquis." Everybody was afraid of him; I, too, was influenced by the general opinion, and spoke to him only with circumspection.

For some time we lived on rather good terms.

It is true that the Marquis had, now and then,

lOO Little What 's-His-Name,

an impertinent way of looking at me, or answering me, that was suggestive of the Old Regime, but I pretended not to notice it, knowing that I had a powerful adversary to deal with.

One day, however, that rascal of a Marquis undertook to answer me, before all the class with such insolence that I lost all patience.

" Monsieur de Boucoyran," said I, trying to keep cool, " take your books, and leave the room immediately."

This was an assertion of authority the rogue had never heard of before. He remained dumbfounded, and stared at me with wide-open eyes, without moving from his place.

I saw that I was involved in a bad business, but I had gone too far to retreat.

" Go out, Monsieur de Boucoyran! " I again commanded.

The boys waited anxiously. For the first time, there was silence in the class.

At my second injunction, the Marquis, who had recovered from his surprise, replied with an air that I wish you could have seen:

" I will not go out."

A murmur of admiration ran through the room. Indignant, I rose from my seat.

" You will not go out, sir? We shall see about that."

And I came down.

God is my witness that at that moment I was far from all idea of violence; I wished simply to intimidate the Marquis by the firmness of my atti-

The Boucoyran Affair. loi

tude ; but, as he saw me descend from my desk, he began to laugh so scornfully, that I made a gesture, as if to seize him by the collar and pull him out of his seat.

The wretch held an enormous iron ruler concealed under his coat. I had scarcely raised my hand when he dealt me a terrible blow on the arm that made me scream with pain.

All the boys clapped their hands.

" Bravo, Marquis ! "

For the moment I lost my head. With one bound I was on the table, with another, on the Marquis ; and then, taking him by the throat, I used my feet, fists, and teeth to such advantage, that I tore him from his place and sent him rolling from the class-room, out into the middle of the court. The whole thing lasted but an instant ; I should never have thought I had so much strength.

The boys were in consternation. No one cried now: " Bravo, Marquis! " They were afraid. Boucoyran, the strongest of the strong, brought to his senses by the poor, mean little under-master! What an extraordinary thing! I had gained in authority what the Marquis had lost in influence.

When I went up to my seat again, still pale and trembling with emotion, all the boys bowed their faces quickly over their desks. The class was subjugated. But what would the principal and M. Viot think of this occurrence? What? I had dared to lift my hand against one of the boys, against the Marquis de Boucoyran, against the one

noble of the school! I must have wanted to get myself discharged then.

These reflections, which came somewhat late, troubled my triumph slightly. I was frightened in my turn. I said to myself: " It is certain that the Marquis has gone to complain." And, from one minute to another, I expected to see the principal enter. I trembled until the end of the study-hour; still, nobody came.

At the recess I was much astonished to see Boucoyran laughing and playing with the others. This reassured me a little; and as the day passed without anything farther happening, I imagined that the rascal would keep quiet, and I should be rid of the affair at the cost of a good fright.

Unfortunately, the Thursday following was a holiday. In the evening the Marquis did not return to the dormitory. I felt a kind of presentiment, and could not sleep all night.

The next day, during the first study-hour, the boys whispered and looked at Boucoyran's empty place. Though I did not show it, I was dying of anxiety. Toward seven o'clock the door opened abruptly. All the boys rose.

I was lost.

The principal entered first, then M. Viot behind him, and finally a tall old man, buttoned up to the chin in a long overcoat, with a stiff collar, four inches high, round his neck. This person I did not know, but I understood at once that it was M. de Boucoyran, senior. He was twisting his long moustache and muttering between his teeth.

I had not even the courage to come down from my desk to greet these gentlemen; nor did they bow to me as they entered. All three took up a position in the middle of the class-room and did not look once in my direction until they went out again.

It was the principal who opened fire.

" Gentlemen," said he, addressing the boys, " we come here to fulfil a painful, a very painful mission. One of your masters has been guilty of so grave a fault that it is our duty to pronounce censure upon him in public."

Thereupon, he proceeded to pronounce censure for at least more than fifteen minutes. All the facts of the case were distorted; the Marquis was the best boy in the school; I had treated him brutally, without reason, without excuse. In short, I had failed in every duty.

What could I reply to these accusations?

From time to time I attempted to defend myself: "Excuse me, sir;" but the principal would not hear me, he pronounced his censure to the very end.

After him, M. de Boucoyran, senior, spoke, and how? It was like the charge against a prisoner. Unhappy father! Somebody had almost murdered his child. Somebody had fallen on this poor little defenceless being, like — like — how should he describe it? like a buffalo, like a wild buffalo. The child had been in bed for two days, and for two days his mother had been watching in tears by his bedside.

Ah, if there were a man to deal with, he, M. de Boucoyran, senior, would have undertaken to avenge his child! But it was nobody but a little wretch whom he despised. Only let that Person understand once for all that, if He ever touched a hair of the boy's head again His ears would be cut short for him.

During this beautiful speech, the boys were laughing in their sleeve, and M. Viot's keys were fluttering with pleasure. Standing up at his desk, pale with rage, the poor Person in question was listening to all these insults, and gulping down these humiliations, very careful not to answer. If He had answered, He would have been dismissed from the school, and then what place was there to go to?

At last, at the end of an hour, when their flow of eloquence was exhausted, the three gentlemen retired. After their departure, there was a great tumult in the school-room. I tried, but in vain, to obtain a little silence; the children laughed in my face. The Boucoyran affair had put the finishing stroke to my authority.

Oh, it was a terrible business! All the town was excited by it. At both the Great Club and the Small Club, at the cafes, among the members of the band, nothing else was talked of Those who were well informed gave details that made one's hair stand on end. It seemed that this under-master was a monster, an ogre. He had tortured the child with refined and unheard-of cruelty. Whenever he was mentioned he was called " the executioner."

When young Boucoyran grew tired of staying in bed, his parents installed him upon the sofa, in the most conspicuous position in their drawing-room, .and for a week there was an interminable procession through this room. The interesting victim was the universal object of attention.

Twenty times consecutively, they made him relate his story, and every tim.e the wretch invented some new detail. The mothers shuddered; the old maids called him " a poor angel," and slipped sugar-plums into his hand. The journal of the opposition profited by the event to thunder against the school in a terrible article intended for the advantage of a religious establishment in the neighborhood.

The principal was furious and, if he did not dismiss me, it was due to the protection of the rector. Alas, it would have been better for me to be sent off at once! My life in the school had become impossible. The boys would no longer listen to me ; at the least word, they threatened to do as Boucoyran had done, and to go to complain to their fathers. I ended by paying no further attention to them.

Through all this, I had a fixed idea, and that was to revenge myself on the Boucoyrans. I kept constantly seeing the insolent face of the old Marquis and my ears still burnt with the threat he had made them. Moreover, if I had wished to forget these insults, I could not have succeeded in doing so; for, twice a week, on the days of our walks, as the boys passed in front of the cafe by

the Bishop's palace, I was sure to find M. de Bou-coyran, senior, planted before the door, in the midst of a group of officers from the garrison, all of them bareheaded and carrying billiard cues in their hands. They watched us coming from a distance, with jeering laughter; then, when my division was within reach of the voice, the Marquis cried very loud, scrutinizing me with a challenging glance : " Good afternoon, Boucoyran."

" Good afternoon, father," yelped the odious boy from among the ranks; and the officers, schoolboys, cafe-waiters, and everybody else laughed.

The " Good afternoon, Boucoyran," had become a torture to me, and there was no means of escaping from it. To go to the Meadow, it was absolutely necessary to pass in front of the cafe by the Bishop's palace, and my persecutor never once missed being at the appointed place.

Sometimes I felt a mad desire to go up to him and challenge him; but I was deterred by two reasons ; first, the constant fear of being discharged, and then the sword of the Marquis, a devilish big rapier that had made so many victims when he was in the life-guards.

However, one day, maddened to the last degree, I went to find Roger, the fencing-master, and point-blank declared to him my resolution to measure myself against the Marquis. Roger, to whom I had not spoken for a long time, listened to me with a certain reserve ; but when I had done, he pressed both my hands warmly in a burst of feeling.

" Bravo, Monsieur Daniel! I knew all the time that, with that air of yours, you could not be a spy. Then why the deuce were you always in league with your M. Viot? At last I understand you, and all is forgotten. Give me your hand, you are a noble fellow ! Now, as to your affair; you have been insulted? Good. You want to get reparation for it? Very good. You do not know the first thing about fencing? Good, good ; very good, very good. You want me to prevent your being run through by that old fool? All right! Come to the fencing-hall and in six months it is you who will run him through."

I blushed with pleasure when I heard the kind Roger espouse my quarrel with so much ardor. We agreed about the lessons ; three hours a week; we agreed also upon the price, which was to be altogether exceptional. (Exceptional in fact! I learned later that he made me pay twice as much as the others.) When all these compacts were settled, Roger passed his arm familiarly through mine.

" Monsieur Daniel," said he, " it is too late today for our first lesson; but we can go and conclude our bargain at the Cafe Barbette. Come along, don't be a baby ! Can it be, by any chance, that you are afraid of the Cafe Barbette? Come on, confound you, and leave that hotbed of pedants for a little while. You will find friends over there, good fellows, by all that's holy! Noble fellows, and with them, you will soon get over those old woman's ways that do you wrong."

Alas ! I yielded to the temptation, and we went to the Caf6 Barbette. It was the same as ever, full of shouts, smoke, and red pantaloons; the same shakoes, and the same sword-belts hanging on the same pegs.

Roger's friends received me with open arms. He was right, they were all noble fellows. When they heard my story of the Marquis, and the resolution I had taken, they came up, one after another, to shake hands with me: " Bravo, young man. You are all right."

I, too, was a noble fellow. I ordered punch, we drank to my triumph, and it was decided among the noble fellows that I should kill the Marquis de Boucoyran at the end of the school year.

CHAPTER X.

EVIL DAYS.

Winter had come, a dry, terrible, black, winter, such as they have up there among the mountains. The court-yards of the school were sad to see, with their great leafless trees, and the ground frozen harder than a stone. We got up before day, by lamplight; it was cold; there was ice in the basins. The boys were never ready in time; the bell had to be rung repeatedly for them. " Make haste, gentlemen!" cried the masters, walking up and down to keep warm. The ranks were formed in silence, somehow or other, and we went down the great stairway, dimly lighted, and through the long corridors where the deadly winter winds were whistling.

A bad winter for Little What 's-His-Name.

I worked no longer. During the study-hour, the unwholesome heat of the stove made me sleep, and while the recitations were going on, as my room in the attic was too cold for me, I flew to shut myself up in the Cafe Barbette, and never left it until the last moment. It was there that Roger now gave me his lessons; the severity of the weather had driven us from the fencing-hall, and we fenced in the middle of the cafe with billiard

no Little What 's-His-Name.

cues, drinking punch. The non-commissioned officers passed judgment on the strokes; all those noble fellows had decidedly admitted me to their intimacy, and taught me daily some new infallible thrust for killing the poor Marquis de Boucoyran. They taught me how to sweeten absinthe, and when they played billiards, it was I who marked the points for them.

A bad winter for Little What's-His-Name.

One morning of that sad winter, as I entered the Cafe Barbette, — I can still hear the click of the billiard balls, and the puffing of the big china stove, — Roger rushed toward me, saying : " A few words with you, Monsieur Daniel! " and dragged me into a back room, with a very mysterious air.

A lover's confidence was the point in question. You may fancy whether I was proud of receiving confidences from a man of his figure. It seemed to make me grow taller. Here is the story. This swaggering fencing-master had met in the town, in a certain place that he could not name, a certain person with whom he had fallen madly in love. This person occupied at Sarlande, a position that was so lofty, — h'm, h'm, you understand, — so extraordinary, that the fencmg-master was still wondering how he had dared lift his eyes so high. And yet, in spite of this person's position, — a position so lofty, so, etc., — he did not despair of being loved in return, and even thought the moment had come for hazarding some epistolary declarations. Unfortunately, fencing-masters are not very proficient in exercises of the pen. It would

have been one thing to write to a grisette ; but with a person in a position that was so, etc., a barroom style would not be acceptable, and even a good poet would not be thrown away.

" I see what you want," said Little What 's-His-Name, with a knowing air; "you need some one to turn out a few polite love-letters for you to send the lady, and you thought of me."

" That's just it," answered the fencing-master,

" Very well, I am your man, and we can begin whenever you wish ; only, you must give me some description of the lady, so that our letters may not seem to be taken out of the Letter Writer's Manual"

The fencing-master looked round distrustfully, and then said to me, in a whisper, cramming his moustaches into my ear:

" She is a Parisian blonde, and smells as sweet as a flower. Her name is Cecilia."

He could make no farther confidences on account of the lady's position, — a position that was so, etc., — but these details were enough for me, and that same evening, during the study-hour, I wrote my first letter to the blonde Cecilia.

This strange correspondence between Little What's-His-Name and this mysterious person lasted about a month. For a month I wrote, on an average, two passionate letters a day. Some of these letters were tender and ethereal as Elvira's Lamartine, and others were as ardent and full of fury as Sophie's Mirabeau. There were some that began with the words : " O Cecilia, sometimes on

a wild cliff," and ended with these: " They say that one may die of it— let us try ! " Then, from time to time, the Muse had a hand in them:

" Oh, those burning lips of thine, Press, oh ! press them close to mine !"

To-day, I laugh when I speak of it; but at that time Little What's-His-Name did not laugh, I can tell you, and it was all done very seriously. When I had finished a letter, I gave it to Roger for him to copy in his handsome, non-commissioned officer's hand ; and, on his side, as soon as he received the answers (for the poor woman answered him), he brought them at once to me, and I based my operations upon them.

The game pleased me on the whole, perhaps even pleased me too much. The invisible blonde, perfumed like a white lilac, never left my thoughts. At times I imagined that I was writing on my own account; I filled my letters with confidences that were entirely personal, with curses against destiny, and the vile and malicious beings among whom I was obliged to live. "O Cecilia! If you knew how much I need your love! "

Sometimes, too, when the strapping Roger said to me twirling his moustache : " That's just right; keep on," I felt a secret impulse of vexation, and thought to myself: " How can she believe it is that big roistering braggart who writes her these masterpieces of passion and melancholy?"

She believed it, however, believed it so implicitly, that one day, the fencing-master, triumphant,

came to bring me the reply he had just received : " At nine, this evening, behind the sub-prefecture."

Was it to the eloquence of my letters or to the length of his moustaches that Roger owed his success? I leave the trouble of deciding with you, ladies. It is nevertheless true that on that night, in his melancholy room, Little What 's-His-Name had very restless slumbers. He dreamt that he was tall, and had moustaches, and that Parisian ladies, occupying very extraordinary positions, made appointments to meet him behind sub-prefectures.

The most amusing thing of all is that on the next day I was obliged to write a letter of gratitude, and thank Cecilia for all the happiness she had given me. *' Angel, who consented to pass one night upon earth."

Little What 's-His-Name wrote this letter, I confess, with rage in his heart. Fortunately the correspondence stopped there, and for some time I heard nothing more said of Cecilia or of her lofty position.

CHAPTER XI.

MY GOOD FRIEND THE FENCING-MASTER.

On the i8th of February, as much snow had fallen during the night, the children were not able to play in the courts. Therefore, as soon as the morning study-hour was over, they were shut in the hall, to amuse themselves, under shelter from the bad weather, while waiting for recitations.

I was superintending them.

What they called the hall was the old gymnasium of the naval academy. Imagine four high bare walls, with little grated windows; here and there iron cramps half torn out, traces of ladders still visible, and, dangling from the main beam of the ceiling, an enormous iron ring at the end of a rope.

The children seemed to be having a very good time there. They ran noisily all round the hall, making the dust rise. Some of them tried to reach the ring; others hung suspended by their hands, shouting; five or six, of a calmer disposition, were eating their bread in front of the windows, looking at the snow that filled the streets, and at the men armed with shovels, who were carrying it away in carts. But I heard nothing of all the racket.

Alone in a corner with tears in my eyes, I was reading a letter, and the boys at that moment might have demolished the gymnasium from top to bottom, without my observing it. It was a letter from Jacques that I had just received; it was postmarked Paris, ah, yes, Paris! — and this is what it said: